Changing Patterns of Native American Trade in the Middle Atlantic Region and Chesapeake Watershed: A World Systems Perspective

Abstract

Types of trade and trends in the movement of material goods within the Middle Atlantic Region and with adjacent regions is summarized beginning ca 2500 BC. The timing of cycles of trade and the social and cultural developments that may be linked to them are compared with developments in adjacent regions. While it is clear that native peoples of the Middle Atlantic and Chesapeake areas are interacting with their contemporaries in other geographic areas, trends in trade and socio-cultural developments are not synchronous. The world systems of the Chesapeake and Middle Atlantic Region after 2500 BC are relatively small and somewhat insular, at least in comparison with those of the Midwest and Southeast. Although there is evidence of interaction with cultures and societies in adjacent regions, this interaction is not systemic, especially as regards trade. No core-periphery differentiation appears to exist. There is no clear archaeological evidence of more economically and socially developed cultures dominating or exploiting less developed ones intra-regionally or inter-regionally prior to the time of Native-European contact.

The Archaeology of Native Societies in the Chesapeake: New Investigations and Interpretations

“…As is the case elsewhere in North America, an eclectic range of theoretical perspectives has taken root in the Chesapeake (Means and Klein 2003), including those that highlight Native American materiality (e.g. , Hantman 1990;Potter 2006), body symbolism (e.g., Pietak 1998), social hybridity (e.g., Dent 2005;Moore 1993), landscape and emplacement (e.g., Gallivan 2007;Knepper et al 2006), poststructuralist analysis of ritual (e.g., Dunham 1999), Braduelian temporalities (e.g., Jirikowic 1995; Klein and Sanford 2004), world-systems theory (e.g., Hall and Chase-Dunn 1999;Stewart 2004), Darwinian evolutionary theory (e.g., Boyd 2004a), and indigenous perspectives (e.g., Clark and Custer 2003;Hantman et al 2000). Researchers have begun to consider historically oriented interpretations that foreground particular configurations of exchange networks, ideology, tradition, ritual, and agency.…”

Early metal use and crematory practices in the American Southeast

“…The creation of copper objects and the expansion of their exchange have been directly tied to rising sociopolitical complexity during the Late Archaic (8). As mobility decreased and population levels and densities increased, interactions between Late Archaic groups in the Great Lakes, Ohio Valley, Midwest, and Northeast grew in importance, scale, and permanence (16)(17)(18)(19). Exchange of objects was an important aspect of intergroup interactions, perhaps as a method of maintaining and reaffirming alliances (11,17,20).…”